Warner: Europe is 'Rick's Place'

Dec. 7, 2013

Updated Dec. 10, 2013 7:17 a.m.

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A famous name in history, but an obscure European travel destination, travel writer Rick Steves has helped popularize visits to Gibraltar, the British possession on the tip of Spain, as one of his lesser known "backdoor" destinations in Europe. JAVIER BARBANCHO, AP

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Macaroons in a patisserie on Rue Cler in Paris. Travel writer Rick Steves has made the street so popular with fans of his guidebooks, called "Rickniks," that some locals have nicknamed it "Steves Street." NANCY LESON, SEATTLE TIMES

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Rick Steves planned on teaching piano for a career, but began writing travel books in 1979. It's now a multi-million dollar business based in Edmonds, Washington.

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Travel guru Rick Steves has supported marijuana law reform since the 1980s. He was a high profile supporter of the 2012 ballot measure in his home state of Wasington to legalize, regulate and tax marijuana for adults over 21. ELAINE THOMPSON, ASSOCIATED PRESS

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Rick Steves' reputation was built on getting travelers to go beyond the London-Paris-Rome beaten path and try new destinations. One of his "backdoors" is Ravenna, a city in eastern Italy that was an important center of the Byzantine Empire based in Constantinople. COURTESY OF RICK STEVES

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Crowds at an Israeli beach near Tel Aviv. Travel expert Rick Steves caused controversy in some circles when he recently said he should have been more critical of the Israeli government in his travel reports from the Holy Land. ARIEL SCHALIT, ASSOCIATED PRESS

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Iranian women wearing the 'chador', a head-to-toe garment, pass a woman in typical western tourist garb in Isfahan, Iran in 2006. Travel guide and public television host Rick Steves was both praised and criticized for a series of reports advocating travel to Iran. HASAN SARBAKHSHIAN, IRN

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The Edmonds, Wash. headquarters of Rick Steves, travel guidebook writer and host of travel television and radio shows. TED S. WARREN, AP

A famous name in history, but an obscure European travel destination, travel writer Rick Steves has helped popularize visits to Gibraltar, the British possession on the tip of Spain, as one of his lesser known "backdoor" destinations in Europe.JAVIER BARBANCHO, AP

Walk down the Rue Cler in Paris and you'll spot dozens. Head up into the tiny Swiss alpine towns of Murren and Wengen and they're there, too. From Donegal to Dubrovnik, you'll find them: The Rick Steves Travelers – or “Rickniks.”

They tote dog-eared copies of “Europe Through the Back Door” or notes from watching “Rick Steves' Europe,” the longest-running travel show on public television. Sunny and calm in prose and in public, Rick Steves is this era's “happy wanderer.”

The 58-year-old travel guru out of Edmonds, Wash., near Seattle, has cast himself as a travel everyman. He's less hyperbolic and hyper-local than the late Huell Howser, but without the smirky world-weariness of Anthony Bourdain.

The take-away message of his shows and books: If this modest man who looks like a teacher can navigate Europe, you can, too.

They're not far off – Steves kept his first career as a piano teacher, even after self-publishing his first book, “Europe Through the Back Door,” which he wrote in 1979. The next year he opened a storefront in Edmonds.

I first became aware of Steves while visiting Berkeley in the mid-1980s. He had launched his “2 to 22 days” series of country- or regional-specific books put out by the non-mainstream John Muir Press. Steves' books were a refreshing departure from the mass-produced tomes of Fodor's and Frommer's in most big bookstores. Each of Steves' books came with his now signature maps hand-drawn by a friend.

I admired Steves – and still do – because he seems so firmly on the traveler's side, seeking out comfortable hotels and authentic but reasonable restaurants where Americans and their wallets will not be abused. How very unlike the TV travel hosts, slick travel magazines and web bloggers fueled by freebies, their reports little more than infomercials for their hosts – usually the local visitors bureau, outrageously overpriced hotels and restaurants.

In 1990, after a decade of success as a niche travel expert, he offered half-hour self-produced travelogues of Europe to public TV stations for free. All they had to do was mention his books (and later website). For cash-strapped stations, “Rick Steves' Europe” was a godsend. For Steves, it brought TV stardom.

Today, Steves runs a mini-empire, still based in Edmonds, that one estimate valued at $20 million. There's a radio show that plays in 170 markets, a free newspaper column and dozens of public appearances.

His website shows the expanding range of the Steves travel offerings. Not just books and DVDs. You can buy Rick Steves-approved money belts, backpacks, neck pillows, an “undefeatable” electrical outlet adapter and a travel journal so you might be the next Rick Steves-in-waiting. You can take all this stuff on his guided tours (usually without Rick). For $50 a half-hour, one of his small cadre of experts will advise you on your travel plans.

Steves has always had his critics, who found his on-screen banter mundane and his destination choices middle brow. Most of all, after three decades, his “backdoors” are the new beaten path.

The critics haven't caused Steves to change his style. He's still, as he describes himself, “fanatically positive and militantly optimistic”

For most of three decades in public life, Steves kept his politics to himself. One exception: his longstanding support for the decriminalization and eventual legalization of marijuana use.

Otherwise, his main mantra was to be polite. Travelers should remember that they are a guests in other peoples' countries and that it is our responsibility to bend to their way of life. Keep things positive and optimistic. Anger and confrontation are the last resort, if then. Basically the age-old advice of “when in Rome, do as the Romans do.” Hardly controversial.

But in 2008, all that changed when he did his travelogue on Iran, using many of the same man-on-the-street interviewing techniques honed in his European programs.

Steves and his supporters saw it as a unique look at the real people – humans with hopes, desires and fears – much like anyone else. It got beyond the “axis of evil” rhetoric.

“While we can abhor their non-democratic regime and wish to jump into the fray in the name of human rights and freedom, the best pragmatic thing we can do for the courageous people demonstrating on the streets of Iran is to hope and pray for them, and stay out of the way,” Steves wrote in a Tribune Media Services essay published in several newspapers, including the Register.

His conclusion: “For Iranian democracy to grow and be viable, it needs to be organic … and without American fertilizer.”

Critics pounced, saying he presented a naive picture of a pliant populace in a dangerous nation. One critic likened the report to journalists who wrote glowingly about Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s while on official trips.

Steves stuck to his positions and sometimes even dug in more. In an interview with Salon.com in 2009, he explained the Iranian trip this way:

“I do want to make clear that Iran is not a free society,” he said. “They traded away their freedom for a theocracy, out of fear. It's just like Americans. We don't want to torture people, we want to have civil liberties, we don't want our government reading our mail. But when we have fear, we let fear trump our commitment to our civil liberties and decency.”

Steves increased the outcry among conservatives when, during a “60 Minutes” show in 2012, he said he had been duped – not by Iranians, but by Israelis who he said gave him a one-sided view of the Holy Land in earlier years.

It's in Europe that Steves and his readers feel most comfortable. He's still hands-on. A friend on vacation a few years ago was pleasantly surprised to walk into a small hotel in Seville and find Steves there, notebook in hand, quizzing the manager about new mattresses on the beds. My friend had found the hotel, of course, from a Steves book.

It's now common to moan about the Steves' impact. A Paris-based journalist I dined with a few years ago dubbed Rue Cler, “Steves Street.”

I didn't mention that we were sitting in a Left Bank restaurant, Le Cremerie Restaurant Polidor, that had been a Steves recommendation going back several editions.

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